I was on a very small cruise ship in San Francisco Bay at dusk. The sun glistened off the water and I went down to a lower level which was open to the water. I could see as we passed other ships in the water and submarines that just barely broke above the surface. As we picked up speed, the water at the edge of the platform I was standing on churned. I stuffed the rest of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich into my mouth and moved to a safer level.
We made our way up a tiny inlet and I noticed a water ambulance racing past us in the opposite direction. We moored in a small bay where we were supposed to play games. I noticed, however, that there were many people digging furiously as if looking for something buried underneath the sand. I soon found out that they were searching for a missing girl.
We joined the search, and she was found by a member of our party. My friend pulled her out of the sand by her foot, she must have been 13 and had a pretty face reminiscent of a character in a Tim Burton film. I unfolded her twisted body and noticed she still had a pulse. She opened her eyes and spoke, "Thank goodness I can move my legs. Thank goodness I can move my arms. There wasn't much air down there."
She was curiously calm. I had no idea how long she had been under the sand. I was glad she was alive, because I didn't want to have to perform CPR on a corpse.
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